social media audience

Where Social Media Fits In The Sales Funnel

December 23, 2015 by Marc Guberti Leave a Comment

Social media can make you a lot of money if you know where it fits in the sales funnel.

I hear a lot of talk about making money on social media. People believe that their social media audiences should result in a higher income.

But most people find themselves disappointed. They wonder if all of the time they spent on social media was worth it.

Social media isn’t the problem. The problem is how most people approach making money on social media. We can clearly see the problem in the first tweet I ever sent on Twitter

First of all, the link is broken now. The more important point is that this tweet makes no attempt at building a relationship with my audience. It was the good old “buy this product.”

I didn’t give people enough time to know, like, and trust me.

For a few weeks after that, I continued using social media wrong. My tweets were Amazon affiliate links and my blog posts (before this blog) had a strong focus on getting the sale versus providing value.

Then I focused on using social media to build the relationship with my followers. Once I changed the way I used social media, my revenue increased.

Here is the most important thing you will ever hear about making money on social media:

Social media is the best platform for generating indirect sales.

What does that mean? Social media is a platform where people get to know, like, and trust you.

Social media is also a great platform to promote your landing pages and get subscribers. The way I make money on social media is by using it to grow my email list.

Subscribers are far more likely to buy something you recommend than your social media followers. The logic is the expectation of each platform.

People are used to finding discounts and product information in their inboxes. In fact, some people welcome it.

People go on social media to escape important decisions. They want to interact and see what’s happening. They want free stuff.

In the sales funnel, social media is the very first stage. After you get your followers to complete a few other stages (i.e. subscribing), then some of them become customers.

Okay, that sounds nice. But I don’t have a landing page. Now what?

The quick answer is to create your own landing page as soon as possible. I use Optimize Press for my landing pages while other people use LeadPages. Both are excellent tools to have.

But I know that (unfortunately) not everyone will want to create a landing page right away. Don’t go back to promoting affiliate links to sales pages.

At any moment, there are dozens (or hundreds) or marketers who are asking affiliates to sell their products. These marketers offer training courses containing a wide variety of material.

At least one of those training courses will be within your niche.

These marketers put a lot of planning into their training courses’ success. They write the copy, set up the landing pages, and have affiliate links that ensure affiliates receive their proper commission.

I occasionally promote other people’s landing pages on my social media accounts for a few reasons:

#1: They have all of the email copy set up for you. These emails are optimized to get a lot of opens, clicks, and sales.

#2: The product is created for you. All you have to do is promote the landing page with your affiliate link.

#3: Each sale equals a big commission. The commissions you receive as an affiliate for a training course can get very high. Some people will provide you with a $500 or higher commission per sale.

#4: You get a better idea of how it all works. Maybe some day, you create your own training course and have your own team of affiliates.

It’s just a matter of finding people in your niche who offer this type of opportunity. Then all you have to do at that point is ride with the opportunity.

Is There Any Room For Direct Sales?

I am not actively pursuing direct sales from my social media audience. I prefer promoting landing pages and building the relationship before I offer any products.

With that said, it is possible to do some direct promotion.

I find myself looking through Kim Garst’s tweets again and again. She’s a social media expert with over 420,000 Twitter followers.

She will occasionally do a direct sale on social media that leads people straight to one of her sales pages. However, most of her tweets entice a relationship to be built.

Indirect sales are the best way to go. If you use social media to generate direct sales, my recommendation is to do so with a big discount involved. Discounts grab anyone’s attention, regardless of which platform the discount is discovered on.

When we buy something for a discount, we feel super smart. That’s the main reason discounts result in more product sales.

Sometimes, we won’t even care much for a product but buy it to feel like smart consumers.

In Conclusion

Social media is the best platform for generating indirect sales. Once you use social media with that in mind, you will get more sales in the long-term.

What are your thoughts about social media’s position in the sales funnel? Do you think direct sales work or that indirect sales are all you need? Sound off in the comments section below.

4 Characteristics Of Thriving Social Media Users

December 14, 2015 by Marc Guberti Leave a Comment

How do they do it? I’m talking about the social media users who have large audiences. The social media users that went from zero to hundreds of thousands of followers. It was a question I often asked myself. I wondered if there was some type of secret formula they used.

Yes, there are some saucy methods involved. However, going from not knowing anything about social media to growing a massive audience is epic. A close look at the surface of these individuals quickly reveals how they became successful on social media.

People like to think there’s some secret sauce involved, but these basic characteristics that they share. It turns out we know most of these characteristics already, but they are the key to success on social media. In addition, knowing and doing are two different things.

#1: They Use It The Right Way Every Day

Most of us are good at using social media every day. Successful social media users use it more productively than the common social media user. They look for targeted audiences, engage with those targeted audiences, and provide them with awesome content.

The intent of a successful social media user is to humor the audience or to empower the audience with knowledge. Successful social media users think, “How can I create a better experience?” before they think, “How can I get more followers?”

Use social media in a powerful way, and you are bound to see powerful results.

#2: They Are Patient

You’ve heard this tip for just about everything in your life. Be patient if you want to run faster times. Be patient if you want to be a singer. Be patient, be patient, be patient (I think we all get the point).

But sure enough, patience plays a role yet again. Successful social media users eventually shift to the question “How can I reach out to more people?” Recognize they aren’t asking themselves how to make the “follower” number bigger. They want to reach and empower as many people as possible using social media.

When you first commit to growing a large social media audience, it takes time. Part of the reason is that when you first start, you won’t know everything. Successful social media users now gain hundreds of followers every day. But there was a time when these same social media users struggled to gain five followers in a given day.

Patience got these users from gaining five followers per day to gaining hundreds of followers per day.

#3: They Are Always Hungry For Knowledge

When a new social network is launched, there are two types of pioneers who grow large audiences on the new social network: The Rare Pioneer and the Expected Pioneer. The Rare Pioneer is someone who isn’t successful on any other social network. However, this Rare Pioneer loves the new social network and quickly masters it. Then, people start following this Rare Pioneer on all of the other social networks.

The Expected Pioneer is the successful social media user expanding his/her platform. The Expected Pioneer gets into the action as soon as possible. Since a new social network is getting a lot of sign-ups, it is normal to get a lot of followers just by posting something.

I did two Periscope broadcasts on the day Periscope came out. I assure you that both of them were subpar at best. For one of them, I didn’t even know I was recording a live broadcast. In the first three days after Periscope was launched, I had over 2,000 followers.

Successful social media users often acquire more knowledge by extending themselves onto other social networks. While they wait for a new social network to come out, they are reading blog posts, reading books, and watching videos about social media. They want to be connected with other successful social media users so they can learn more about the platform and build relationships.

Since you are at this point of the blog post, then you hunger for knowledge too. However, you must always hunger for knowledge and want as much of it as possible—even when you too are a successful social media user.

#4: At One Point, They Focused On One Social Network

The social media world is as easy or as complicated as you make of it. Unfortunately, most of us want to make the social media world as complicated for ourselves as possible. We’re tweeting on Twitter, pinning on Pinterest, posting on Facebook, uploading videos to YouTube, and sharing our pictures on Instagram. We’re catching up with the news about Periscope and Blab and still trying to find some time to get the Vine in.

Successful social media users utilize an arsenal of social networks. However, in the beginning of their journeys, the eventual successful social media users would stick with one social network. They tend to master one social network from the inside-out before they try to master another social network.

I view social media mastery in the same way a linguist would view mastering the romance languages. There are two approaches to mastering a series of languages:

Approach #1: I give you flash cards, proper phrases, and Rosetta Stone for French, Spanish, German, Portuguese, and Italian. You have to master all of these languages at the same time.

Approach #2: I give you everything I gave you in the first approach. However, you choose one language and commit yourself to mastering that one language. You only start learning another language once you have mastered the first language you are trying to master.

Give me Approach #2 any day of the week. This is the same way in which we must view social media.

Do all social media users go with the second approach? I would say about 99% of them do, and you can tell. One way you can tell is by the content they write on their blogs. If you go through this blog, you’ll discover that the first social network I discussed in great detail was Twitter. That’s because Twitter was the first social network that I strived to master.

You can also figure out the first social network a successful social media user mastered by looking at the audience sizes of their social networks. Most of the successful social media users will have large audiences elsewhere, but the social network they started on will almost always have the largest audience.

Out of all of my social media accounts, my Twitter account by far has the largest audience. That could change in the future depending on how much I invest into Facebook likes, but right now, Twitter by far has the largest percentage of my social media audience.

If you find me on social media, chances are you’ll find me on Twitter first before you find me on any of my other social networks.

In Conclusion

In our search for the secret sauce, we ignore the recipe on the kitchen door. All successful social media users achieved their success in large part because of these four characteristics. These four characteristics were the foundation that led to the acquisition of other skills.

Those skills combined with these characteristics allow social media users to become successful. These characteristics give you the GPS needed to achieve social media success. You can’t see how many miles you are away from your destination, but you’ll know that the path you are heading on is the right path for you.

Which of these characteristics do you think is the most important? Do you think there are any other defining characteristics of successful social media users? Sound off in the comments section below.

How To Better Serve Your Social Media Audience

November 23, 2015 by Marc Guberti Leave a Comment

You’ve got followers. They see your posts and send out posts of their own. These followers are individuals just like you and me. Most people only know a small portion of their audiences. However, it is possible for any person on social media to understand their entire audience.

It’s a strong statement to say that one person can understand his/her entire social media audience. But even the people with millions of followers can know some things about everyone in their audiences.

So how does someone with a large audience come to know the people within their audience? Better yet, how does this happen in a time efficient manner? The people with millions of followers are not scrolling through one follower at a time, looking at profiles, and having conversations with all of those people. That would take too long.

You serve your social media audience by knowing what that audience wants. The way you know your social media audience is by breaking them up into categories. You break them into categories based on how they engage with you and your content.

Each time you send a post, look at how people engage with that post. Some of your posts will get more engagement than others. When you see that your social media posts about a certain topic always get more shares, then you know your audience wants more of that content.

Early in the game, I discovered that the tweets of mine that received the most attention contained Twitter tips. Blog posts geared towards social media weren’t far behind.

When I made this realization, I decided to write more blog posts about Twitter. That’s why many of my blog posts are geared towards Twitter. The decision paid off. Most of the blog posts I have written about Twitter have been tweeted hundreds of times. My blog post 70 Amazing Twitter Tips has been tweeted over 1,000 times.

I simply knew what my audience wanted and gave them more of it.

While I enjoyed seeing the success of my Twitter related blog posts, I knew that there was more to me than Twitter. I didn’t want this blog to turn exclusively into a Twitter blog. I also wanted to write blog posts about Facebook, Pinterest, productivity, and other business-related topics.

I decided to write blog posts about a greater variety of topics and share them to my social media audience. I saw how my audience engaged with the content I posted and then drew conclusions. My blog posts about Pinterest and blogging received more attention. Then, my productivity blog posts started to pick up engagement.

But inevitably, some blog posts stood out from the others.

I analyzed every blog post I wrote to see which ones got the most social shares. It wasn’t enough for me to know that blog posts geared towards productivity got more social shares. I needed to know specific information (i.e. do more people in my audience engage with my time management blog post or my goal achievement blog post?).

I am not trying to limit the topics I can write about. Rather, I am identifying the most desirable topics. That allows me to know what topics to focus on but also which topics I can incorporate into my other blog posts.

When I write a blog post about Twitter, should I incorporate goal achievement or should I incorporate finding the time to make it happen? If I incorporate both of them, which one do I focus on more? Answering these challenging questions allows you to write better content that your social media audience will love.

Quick Summary Of Categories

Here are some of the categories that my followers are in (it is possible for certain followers to be in more than one category):

Twitter advice

Social media advice

Pinterest advice

Blogging advice

Productivity

With this list, I know which blog posts I should write. I can also think of ways to combine certain topics together so I can appeal to a larger percentage of my social media audience.

Observe How Your Social Media Audience Engages With You

The larger your social media audience becomes, the more you can rely on the notifications tab to understand your audience. I look at the notifications tab to see what people say about my content. I see what people like (and dislike).

Checking every day allows me to see certain patterns develop. This is how I identify which of my blog posts are outperforming most of my other blog posts. This identification is critical for getting more blog traffic from Twitter.

In the beginning, I could tweet more frequently and automatically double my daily visitors from Twitter. Now I tweet once every 15 minutes. I don’t envision myself tweeting once every 7.5 minutes anytime soon. That’s too much even for me.

I get more traffic from Twitter by tweeting my most popular content more often. If this popular content continues to gain popularity, then I know this is a topic my social media audience is interested in. At that point, I begin to create a training course all about that topic.

That’s why Twitter Domination was the first training course I ever published on Udemy. At the time, people recognized me as a Twitter expert more than anything else.

Once you serve your audience and see how they respond, you get to know your audience. Then, you can create products based on what you know about your audience. This cycle ultimately results in you constantly serving your audience and providing them with more value as the days go by.

In Conclusion

Social media is the best platform to grow an audience without paying a penny. I had over 100,000 followers spread across my social networks before I started investing in tools and ads that I now use to exponentially grow my audience.

Regardless of your audience’s size and growth rate, you must learn more about the individuals within your audience. What type of content do they want to read? What do they need that you can provide? Answering these two questions will let you know how you can serve your audience better.

Serving your audience better allows you to know the people in your audience better. Once you serve your audience with free content that you know they like, you can then serve them with products related to those same topics.

How do you engage with your social media audience? What tips do you have for us so we can better serve our audiences? Do you know what your social media audience wants? Sound off in the comments section below.

3 Simple Tactics To Keep Your Social Media Followers

September 23, 2015 by Marc Guberti 2 Comments

When people think about a large social media audience, they think about getting more followers or likes. They will type in phrases like the classic “How To Get More Twitter Followers” and hope to find the secret ingredients to Twitter success.

In the beginning, you must learn how to grow your audience. That way, you can start seeing results. However, there will be a point when your audience is growing at a consistent rate.

What happens then? How does the audience get bigger? Do you search “How To Get More Twitter Followers” so you can discover how to gain 501 Twitter followers every day instead of 500 Twitter followers every day?

The next significant way to grow your audience is to keep the individuals within your current audience. If you gain 500 Twitter followers in one day, but you also get unfollowed by 500 people on the same day, then your Twitter audience didn’t grow at all. If you had 10,000 Twitter followers yesterday, then you’ll have the same number by the end of the day.

On social media, the art of growing your audience consists of two factor:

Getting more followers/likes per day
Getting less unfollows/unlikes per day

Since most people cover the first factor in great detail, I’ll choose to talk about the second factor in greater detail. When it comes to keeping the people in your audience, these three tips come in handy:

#1: Be Active

Being active on social media is critical for building trust, getting more followers, and keeping your followers. Some of my friends who forgot to tweet for a day ended up getting unfollowed by 20 extra people on that day. Harsh, but nevertheless, the reality of a social media audience.

More than a billion people use social media. While it highlights social media’s rapid success as a whole, it also indicates we have options. There are countless social media experts. If the average social media expert stops blogging, then no big deal. There are millions of other social media experts to choose from.

Being active on your social networks lets you gradually build a name for yourself. The people in your audience will begin seeing your social media posts more often. These people will engage with your posts and share your content.

If you put in so much time to building your social media platform, then you must utilize that platform. At one point, I didn’t send anymore pins for my Pinterest account with over 22,000 Pinterest followers (I now hired someone for that).

I got less blog traffic at that time than when I had 500 Pinterest followers and sent a few pins per day. In other words, I got more traffic from 500 Pinterest followers than I got from 22,000 Pinterest followers, and it was my fault.

The moment you find yourself stretching your boundaries, stop. Before expanding into new horizons, discover methods that allow you to save a significant amount of time or outsource some of your social media activities to someone else.

#2: Post Valuable Content

No matter how active you are on social media, you must always post valuable content. Bloggers praise valuable content to their audiences as often as parents praise veggies to their children.

Out of curiosity, I wondered what would happen if someone posted on social media so often but didn’t provide much value. Would someone, say, with over one million tweets have a large audience.

It turns out posting lots of bad content doesn’t help grow a large audience. Three Twitter accounts with over 1 million tweets each prove the assertion very well. Take a look:

@Aviongoo: 1.68 million tweets later, the account has a little over 300 Twitter followers.
@Market_JP: 1.56 million tweets later, the account has under 400 Twitter followers.
@ATNews: 1.19 million tweets later, the account has a little over 200 Twitter followers.

It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to discover these accounts are posting low value content. Just because you are sending more social media posts than your competitors does not mean you are doing any better.

The value you provide with your social media posts determines the overall impact of your platform…and the number of people who decide to stick around.

#3: Engage With Your Audience

Each time someone tweets one of my blog posts, I make it a point to thank the person or favorite the tweet. Doing this lets the person know I care and appreciate the support.

Your audience helps you become more successful. While building relationships helps you reach new audiences, the people who share/read your content and/or buy your products help make you successful.

When you engage with your audience, you are engaging with the same people who help you become more successful. It’s the least we can do to support our audiences.

There are people in your audience who have been following your journey for a while. These people would feel honored if they got a response from you. Other people in your audience are looking for answers to some of their problems. Answer those questions, and the people in your audience will be grateful.

Engaging with your audience will effectively humanize your social media efforts. The entire point of automating social media posts is to open up more time to engage with your audience. When the term “social media” was coined, it included the word “social” for a reason.

The most meaningful relationships I have had with individuals within my audience started from conversations on social media. You never know where one conversation can take you and your brand.

In Conclusion

Many people focus on growing their social media audiences. Although an admirable approach, it becomes easy to forget the importance of keeping the audience you have already built. If you gain 100 Twitter followers on the day you lose 100 Twitter followers, then your audience size will remain the same.

Once you master growing your social media audience rapidly and keeping most of the people within your audience, you will find it much easier to grow a large social media audience.

What are your thoughts about growing a social media audience VS keeping the one you have? Which of the two do you think is more important? Do you have any other methods for keeping social media followers? Sound off in the comments section below.